Posted: 10/6/2009 6:23:32 AM EDT
| I have a PC running an AMD 64 class processor. What, if anything, would I reasonably expect to gain by running a 64 bit version of Windows XP versus the 32 bit version? |
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Quoted:
I have a PC running an AMD 64 class processor. What, if anything, would I reasonably expect to gain by running a 64 bit version of Windows XP versus the 32 bit version? DO NOT run Windows XP 64bit it is awful the only thing you will get from it is headaches. Running Windows 64bit will allow you to access 4GB or more memory a lot more if you want, that is becoming important for some applications especially graphics, big databases, video, and gaming. But you do not want to run XP 64bit, driver support is terrible and it has many problems if you are going 64 bit use Vista or even better Windows 7. Before you commit make sure your motherboard will allow you to install 4GB ram or more. |
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sometimes, 32bit is actually faster than 64. (on a 64bit machine) if you have a true 64 bit application running on a 64 bit os, that should perform better. as long as the 64bit os's have been out, you'd think there would be better support.. thats probably changing, albeit slowly, with the multicore cpus becoming more popular. |
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Quoted: Quoted: I have a PC running an AMD 64 class processor. What, if anything, would I reasonably expect to gain by running a 64 bit version of Windows XP versus the 32 bit version? DO NOT run Windows XP 64bit it is awful the only thing you will get from it is headaches. Running Windows 64bit will allow you to access 4GB or more memory a lot more if you want, that is becoming important for some applications especially graphics, big databases, video, and gaming. But you do not want to run XP 64bit, driver support is terrible and it has many problems if you are going 64 bit use Vista or even better Windows 7. Before you commit make sure your motherboard will allow you to install 4GB ram or more. +1 on the XP64.. I got that early on.. while it was nice, driver support was virtually non-existant. I run Ubuntu x64 on 3 different machines with great success. I'll probably try win7 (x64) on at least one, when it's released to the general public. |
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Quoted:
sometimes, 32bit is actually faster than 64. (on a 64bit machine) if you have a true 64 bit application running on a 64 bit os, that should perform better. as long as the 64bit os's have been out, you'd think there would be better support.. thats probably changing, albeit slowly, with the multicore cpus becoming more popular. Pretty much everything runs faster in Windows 7 64bit IF you have 4GB of ram. Support for Vista 64bit is pretty good and excellent for Windows 7 especially on newer hardware. Vista and 7 use the same driver model so that simplified things there. Manufacture support for XP 64bit was spotty to non-existent and is only going to get worse with newer hardware.. |
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+1 on the RAM capacity. Even if you have 4GB of RAM installed in a 32-bit OS, the machine can only "read/use" something like 3.25GB (maybe 3.75GB if your lucky). I'm still on WinXP 32-Bit that won't read the entire capacity of my RAM as well as my Video RAM.
Lady at work was having problems and decided to up the RAM. She got 6GB more to add to her already installed 2GB. We later realized that her machine wasn't reading the entire 8GB cause she was on a 32-bit XP OS. If it's worth anything, Microsoft is making all their new OS's to run 64-bit only so it might just make sense to set up your machine to run 64-bit for the future. My wife's Vista laptop is 64-bit. I don't really see a difference in performance on her machine, but she doesn't run very heavy graphic/ rendering/photo stuff like I do on my 32-bit WinXP Pro machine. Aside from all the Vista doo-dadds that you have to get used to the main thing that I noticed is that programs that you install that are 32-bit are prompted to be intstalled into the program files (x86) folder and 64-bit programs install to the 64-bit Program Files folder on the C Drive. Otherwise, the 32-bit apps run as well as any 64-bit on the machine. My office kept it at 32-bit cause there wasn't really good reason to spend the upgrade money back in the day, but I would say that since OS's are moving to 64-bit totally and you can still run 32-bit (any old software you still have), you win on all counts and especially with the RAM. |
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I am planning to upgrade my desktop to 8GB RAM since it is supported by my motherboard and I am running Windows 7 RTM Professional 64bit When I went from XP 32bit to 64bit Win7 I noticed a considerable improvement I am really hoping that we upgrade to Windows 7 at work and that we get the option to have a 64bit version in addition. |
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Quoted: I have a PC running an AMD 64 class processor. What, if anything, would I reasonably expect to gain by running a 64 bit version of Windows XP versus the 32 bit version? If all you do is web/email/putz around, then not much. Edit: If I could work my will I'd have a DEC Alpha running BeOS  |
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XP 64 is kinda like the lost OS.
If you are lucky enough to find drivers, a lot of your programs will be unsupported. Even messenger doesn't work on it. Unless you are doing a shit ton of multimedia editing and you have 64 bit media editing programs that don't work on something like Linux, it's not worth it. That's where 64 bit really shines, multimedia. |